The Spiderweb
- I had been searching for the topology of spacetime
under the assumption that spacetime is discrete (and not a continuum).
While traveling in Africa, where buses tend to be in terrible conditions and
an intact windshield is a rarity, it occurred
to me that a cracked windshield invariably displays the same pattern that
a spider uses to create its web. What do a cracked windshield and a spiderweb
have in common?
- I am still trying to articulate the answer, but i realized that
the spiderweb was the topology that i was looking for, and a rather simple one
(concentric circles intersected by straight lines at different angles).
The spacetime of each observer is a spiderweb.
- The spiderweb also works well as a metaphor for what the observer is doing: trying to capture the horizon of other observers.
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